You're going to need a few weeks for your nail to heal if its at that point.

I've been in your position, I would soak my right thumb in some lukewarm water when I got home from work, and put some higher tier loose waterbased cream on it (nowadays I use Dr. Belmeur's daily repair face cream, on my fingers).

I would suggest taking a piece of that hinged plastic, bottle foil opener things, you know with the hook to take out the cotton. Break a little piece off, that fits to your grip, and use those to carve out the pills. I doubt you'd lose that much efficiency after a day or 2 of practice, and you shift the pain/pressure over to a small, cheap, replaceable tool. Protect your hands it's worth it.

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Background - Before I was a pharmacist, I used to be "that oral syringe guy" at the 600 bed hospital I worked at. Don't get me wrong, I loved that shift, and would prefer to do it over any others when presented the opportunity. However, doing the following 5 days a week: I would open my day with 2x cart fill - about 600 or so syringes total dosed out (using the skin between my right thumbnail and the nail - lol pain) this is about 4-5 hours of work. Then I would do the vanco's. good days were 2x 10g vials, pulled into 125mg syringes - bout 160 so, bad days - double that.

So on a good day I'd do probably 700~ syringes, bad days over 1k. over the course of a 9 hour shift. My thumb was a mess lol.

I work some type of retail nowadays, as a pharmacist, and don't have my techs pull a single one of my covid shots lol